It's a beautiful time of year to let go of the past and resentments, old or new. Forgiveness is a gift that we give to ourselves, offering us great freedom. It's like a clean slate or a blank canvas upon which we can create anew, or begin again, whilst anchored in pure Truth. Let's let it go before the new year, yes?

I am forgiving, forgivable, and forgiven.

I forgive everyone. I forgive me, I forgive you. Even if you are not sorry, or know not what you did to hurt me, I forgive you. Please forgive me too. Even if I haven't apologized, or know not what I did to hurt you, please forgive me. Even if you do know what you did to cause me pain, and even if I do know what I did to cause you pain, I forgive you. Will you forgive me too?

Where there are no words that can be spoken to change the past, there is a known apology inside of the deepest part of me and inside of the deepest part of you. I'll meet you there.

When we meet again, in whatever form that takes, we shall each be created in a new image and likeness, not bound to, nor by the past.

The deepest place within you and I are as eternal and vast as the space that spans beyond the myriad universes. When I meet you, I know that I am meeting and greeting my secret and unseen self, none greater or lesser in whole or worth. Here we are wrapped in Divine Love; here there is never anything to forgive in the first place. Where there is no I and no you, where we are one, I forgive.

I am forgiving, forgivable, and forgiven.

Photo by Elizabeth Rowley

Open Hearts See Love Everywhere

One day I was doing household chores. It was just an ordinary day. As I was moving from one room to the next I heard the following words whispered in my head: "I love you. I love you. I love you." It was my own voice.

I stopped what I was doing and sat down on the floor to allow this love to wash over and through me. In that moment I knew that I had changed.

This new voice of unconditional love was different than the predominant voices heard in the past which I had grown all too familiar with. 

This was the soft voice of a gentle, loving Spirit within me. 

As I began to court this Love, it shifted my view of the world, and it continues to change me, even today. 

Today I court Divine Love. I let this love wash over and through me and I am transformed by it.

Radiating Love out to all who I come in contact with, it illuminates darkness, casts out fear, and renews my joy of life.

Oneness Does Not Equal Sameness

This is a rewrite of a previous blog post I wrote back in 2011.  What a joy to revisit and edit this important topic to share with you for such a time as this!

Often times our brains get busy trying to understand and make sense of Spiritual principles intellectually while the body is unknowingly re-tuning itself to the vibrational match of a newly (re)introduced eternal verity.  Something which was always known, but at some point became unknown or hidden, as the result of the conditioned experiences of one’s life.

What I have learned along my personal Spiritual path is that my body often gets it long before my brain does.  Then when the time is right, the spark occurs followed by a resonant mental understanding, followed by a heartfelt sense of grace and knowing.  Magic.

“Oneness does not equal sameness.” 

Consider the simple hindu greeting and salutation upon meeting or the valediction upon parting ways of “Namaste.”  Namaste literally translates as “I bow to you.”  It also has the deeper spiritual meaning that the life force, the divinity, the Self or the God in me is the same in all. “Namaste - the God in me honors the God in you.”

Honoring the God in another person is becoming aware that we are all made of the same stuff, yet we are not identical expressions of that stuff!  Wouldn’t that be boring if we were?  A bunch of me’s or a bunch of you’s walking the planet and nobody else?  Spooky thought.

I had an experience of embodying oneness at a 5 night silent retreat with one of my favorite enlightened guys, Adyashanti.  There were 400+ attendees on this retreat and we were four days deep into the container of silence.  In the second silent sitting of the afternoon I opened my eyes suddenly, looked around the room and noticed that everyone was together in the same silent container, observing the same things: passing thoughts, coughing, inner peace, still body, still mind - through different eyes, in different bodies.  Suddenly I was hovering above the crowd. Then I was looking through the eyes of the person next to me, then before me, then the person across the room to the right, and then across the room to the left.  

I shook my head quickly in an attempt to think something.  I have the subtle memory of attempting to get back into my body or brain but I couldn’t seem to locate that little me.  Another good head shaking was enough to wake up my thinking and all I could say was, “WOAH,” to myself silently in my head before closing my eyes again. 

While it may sound a bit strange or different, it was a profound mystical experience that transformed me.  I recognized that the magnitude of the realization for me at that time, in where I was spiritually, was a bit vast for me to reside in for more than a few seconds.  Gratefully it has gradually integrated within me over time.

The realization of this type of eternal verity - oneness - presents the same dilemma as many other realizations on this path.  It's the great paradox that we are, in fact, spiritual beings having a human experience. Not one or the other, but both at the same time.  God in form.  Individualized, unique expressions of the Divine.  I have discovered that as long as I am having this human experience I must honor both the Oneness, the Divinity in me that is the Divinity in you, and the uniqueness of me and of you.  I can't afford to forget nor undervalue the human experience expressed in so many different ways.  Nor to pretend that we are all the same.

I’m a 5’3”, 40 (something) year old, female, Hispanic, with brown hair, hazel eyes, and athletic.  You may be a 5’8”, 22 year old male, person of color, with brown hair, brown eyes, and not athletic.  Each of us with our own unique life experiences, conditioning, ancestry and heritage.  Privileged or burdened by circumstances that we were born into, beyond our control.

Living in this paradox makes life a thrilling adventure.  God is all there is and you are God in form in your own uniquely fabulous way.  Divine and human.  Just like the quarter has a heads side and a tails side.  Both are the quarter yet each side is uniquely different.  Yes we are one, but we are not the same. 

We are called to honor the Divinity within one another, and simultaneously honor the uniqueness of one another as the individualized expressions of the Divine that we are.  We cannot honor one without the other.  To do so is to bypass or dismiss the human experience and pretend that it is not happening.  This is like saying the quarter is only the heads side or only the tails side, or it is neither heads nor tails, it is just a quarter. That's the mistake or conundrum we may find ourselves in after embodying the verity of oneness.  It’s actually both and.  Many individualized expressions of the One.

I honor the Divinity within you that is you, and simultaneously honor the unique individual, expressions of the Divine AS you!  Now time to take that eternal verity and see the world through the eyes of the Beloved Presence, honoring all of it.

Today I invite you to look at the people around you with love and compassion, without judgment, noticing their unique beauty.  What do you think is their nationality or ethnicity? What kind of body shape do they have? What color is their hair and their eyes? What age are they? How tall, etc.?  Be curious.  What brought them to where they are today?  What was their ancestry like? What might their privilege or burden be? And then ask the same questions of yourself.  

Lastly ask yourself this: How might I help create a world of inclusion?  How may I contribute to creating a world that works for everyone? 

Namaste.